John Splendid Part 10

CHAPTER IX.--INVASION.

Eight hours after the beacon kindled on Dunchuach, the enemy was feeling at the heart of Argile.

It came out years after, that one Angus Macalain, a Glencoe man, a branded robber off a respectable Water-of-Duglas family, had guided the main body of the invaders through the mountains of the Urchy and into our territory. They came on in three bands, Alasdair Mac-Donald and the Captain of Clanra.n.a.ld (as they called John MacDonald, the beast--a scurvy knave!), separating at Accurach at the forking of the two glens, and entering both, Montrose himself coming on the rear as a support As if to favour the people of the Glens, a thaw came that day with rain and mist that cloaked them largely from view as they ran for the hills to shelter in the sheiling bothies. The ice, as I rode up the water-side, home to Glen Shira to gather some men and dispose my father safely, was breaking on the surface of the loch and roaring up on the sh.o.r.e in the incoming tide. It came piling in layers in the bays--a most wonderful spectacle! I could not hear my horse's hooves for the cracking and crushing and cannonade of it as it flowed in on a south wind to the front of the Gearran, giving the long curve of the land an appearance new and terrible, filled as it was far over high-water mark with monstrous blocks, answering with groans and cries to every push of the tide.

I found the glen wrapped in mist, the Gearran hamlet empty of people, Maam, Kilblaan, Stuchgoy, and Ben Bhuidhe presenting every aspect of desolation. A weeping rain was making sodden all about my father's house when I galloped to the door, to find him and the _sgalag_ the only ones left.

The old man was bitter on the business.

"Little I thought," said he, "to see the day when Glen Shira would turn tail on an enemy."

"Where are they?" I asked, speaking of our absent followers; but indeed I might have saved the question, for I knew before he told me they were up in the conies between the mounts, and in the caves of Glen Finne.

He was sitting at a fire that was down to its grey ash, a mournful figure my heart was vexed to see. Now and then he would look about him, at the memorials of my mother, her chair and her Irish Bible (the first in the parish), and a posy of withered flowers that lay on a bowl on a shelf where she had placed them, new cut and fresh, the day she took to her deathbed. Her wheel, too, stood in the corner, with the thread snapped short in the heck--a hint, I many times thought, at the sundered interests of life.

"I suppose we must be going with the rest," I ventured; "there's small sense in biding here to be butchered."

He fell in a rain of tears, fearing nor death nor hardship, I knew, but wae at the abandonment of his home. I had difficulty in getting him to consent to come with me, but at last I gave the prospect of safety in the town and the company of friends there so attractive a hue that he consented So we hid a few things under a _bruach_ or overhanging brae beside the burn behind the house, and having shut all the doors--a comical precaution against an army, it struck me at the time--we rode down to Inneraora, to the town house of our relative Craignure.

It was a most piteous community, crowded in every lane and pend with men, women, and children dreadful of the worst All day the people had been trooping in from the landward parts, flying before the rumour of the Athole advance down Cladich. For a time there was the hope that the invaders would but follow the old Athole custom and plunder as they went, sparing unarmed men and women, but this hope we surrendered when a lad came from Camus with a tale of two old men, who were weavers there, and a woman, nailed into their huts and burned to death.

Had Inneraora been a walled town, impregnable, say, as a simple Swabian village with a few sconces and redoubts, and a few pieces of cannon, we old soldiers would have counselled the holding of it against all comers; but it was innocently open to the world, its back windows looking into the fields, its through-going wynds and closes leading frankly to the highway.

A high and sounding wind had risen from the south, the sea got in a tumult, the ice-blocks ran like sheep before it to the Gearran bay and the loch-head. I thought afterwards it must be G.o.d's providence that opened up for us so suddenly a way of flight from this lamentable trap, by the open water now free from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e in front of the town.

Generalling the community as if he was a marshal of brigade, John Splendid showed me the first of his manly quality in his preparation for the removal of the women and children. He bade the men run out the fishing smacks, the wherries and skiffs, at the Cadger's Quay, and moving about that frantic people, he disposed them in their several places on the crafts that were to carry them over the three-mile ferry to Cowal. A man born to enterprise and guidance, certes! I never saw his equal. He had the happy word for all, the magic hint of hope, a sober merriment when needed, sometimes a little raillery and laughing, sometimes (with the old) a farewell in the ear. Even the better gentry, Sir Donald and the rest, took a second place in the management, beholding in this poor gentleman the human heart that at a pinch is better than authority in a gold-braided coat.

By noon we had every bairn and woman (but for one woman I'll mention) on their way from the sh.o.r.e, poor dears! tossing on the turbulent sea, the women weeping bitterly for the husbands and sons they left, for of men there went with them but the oldsters, able to guide a boat, but poorly equipped for battling with Irish banditty. And my father was among them, in the kind hands of his _sgaiag_ and kinswomen, but in a vague indifference of grief.

A curious accident, that in the grace of G.o.d made the greatest difference on my after-life, left among them that found no place in the boats the daughter of Provost Brown. She had made every preparation to go with her father and mother, and had her foot on the beam of the boat, when an old woman set up a cry for an oe that had been forgot in the confusion, and was now, likely, crying in the solitude of the back lands. It was the love-bairn of a dead mother, brought up in the kindly Highland fashion, free of every gimel and kail-pot. Away skirted Betty up the causeway of the Cadger's Quay, and in among the lanes for the little one, and (I learned again) she found it playing well content among puddled snow, chattering to itself in the loneliness of yon war-menaced town. And she had but s.n.a.t.c.hed it up to seek safety with her in the boats when the full tide of Colkitto's robbers came pelting in under the Arches. They cut her off from all access to the boats by that way, so she turned and made for the other end of the town, hoping to hail in her father's skiff when he had put far enough off sh.o.r.e to see round the point and into the second bay.

We had but time to shout her apparent project to her father, when we found ourselves fighting hand-to-hand against the Irish gentry in trews.

This was no market-day brawl, but a stark a.s.sault-at-arms. All in the sound of a high wind, broken now and then with a rain blattering even-down, and soaking through tartan and _clo-dubh_ we at it for dear life. Of us Clan Campbell people, gentrice and commoners, and so many of the Lowland mechanics of the place as were left behind, there would be something less than two hundred, for the men who had come up the loch-side to the summon of the beacons returned the way they came when they found MacCailein gone, and hurried to the saving of wife and bairn.

We were all well armed with fusil and sword, and in that we had some advantage of the caterans bearing down on us; for they had, for the main part, but rusty matchlocks, pikes, billhooks--even bows and arrows, antique enough contrivance for a time of civilised war! But they had hunger and hate for their backers, good guidance in their own savage fashion from MacDonald, and we were fighting on a half heart, a body never trained together, and stupid to the word of command.

From the first, John took the head of our poor defence. He was _duine-uasail_ enough, and he had, notoriously, the skill that earned him the honour, even over myself (in some degree), and certainly over Sir Donald.

The town-head fronted the upper bay, and between it and the grinding ice on the sh.o.r.e lay a broad tract of what might be called esplanade, presenting ample s.p.a.ce for our encounter.

"Gentlemen," cried John, picking off a man with the first shot from a silver-b.u.t.ted _dag_ he pulled out of his waist-belt at the onset, "and with your leave, Sir Donald (trusting you to put pluck in these Low Country shopkeepers), it's Inneraora or Ifrinn for us this time. Give them cold steel, and never an inch of arm-room for their bills!"

Forgotten were the boats, behind lay all our loves and fortunes--was ever Highland heart but swelled on such a time? St.u.r.dy black and hairy scamps the Irish--never German boor so inelegant--but venomous in their courage! Score upon score of them ran in on us through the Arches. Our lads had but one shot from the muskets, then into them with the dirk and sword.

"Montrose! Montrose!" cried the enemy, even when the blood glucked at the thrapple, and they twisted to the pain of the knife.

"A papist dog!" cried Splendid, hard at it on my right, for once a zealous Protestant, and he was whisking around him his broadsword like a hazel wand, facing half-a-dozen Lochaber-axes. "Cruachan, Cruachan!" he sang. And we cried the old slogan but once, for time pressed and wind was dear.

Sitting cosy in taverns with friends long after, listening to men singing in the cheery way of taverns the ditty that the Leckan bard made upon this little spulzie, I could weep and laugh in turns at minding of yon winter's day. In the hot stress of it I felt but the ardour that's in all who wear tartan--less a hatred of the men I thrust and slashed at with Sir Claymore than a zest in the busy traffic, and something of a pride (G.o.d help me!) in the pretty way my blade dirled on the ham-pans of the rascals. There was one trick of the sword I had learned off an old sergeant of pikes in Macka's Scots, in a leisure afternoon in camp, that I knew was alien to every man who used the targe in home battles, and it served me like a Mull wife's charm. They might be st.u.r.dy, the dogs, valorous too, for there's no denying the truth, and they were gleg, gleg with the target in fending, but, man, I found them mighty simple to the feint and lunge of Alasdair Mor!

Listening, as I say, to a song in a tavern, I'm sad for the stout fellows of our tartan who fell that day, and still I could laugh gaily at the amaze of the ragged corps who found gentlemen before them. They p.r.i.c.ked at us, for all their natural ferocity, with something like apology for marring our fine clothes; and when the end came, and we were driven back, they left the gentlemen of our band to retreat by the pends to the beech-wood, and gave their attention to the main body of our common townsmen.

We had edged, Splendid and Sir Donald and I, into a bit of green behind the church, and we held a council of war on our next move.

Three weary men, the rain smirring on our sweating, faces, there we were! I noticed that a trickle of blood was running down my wrist, and I felt at the same time a beat at the shoulder that gave the explanation, and had mind that a fellow in the Athole corps had fired a pistolet point-blank at me, missing me, as I had thought, by the thickness of my doublet-sleeve.

"You've got a cut," said Sir Donald. "You have a face like the clay."

"A bit of the skin off," said I, unwilling to vex good company.

"We must take to Eas-a-chosain for it," said Splendid, his eyes flashing wild upon the scene, the gristle of his red neck throbbing.

Smoke was among the haze of the rain; from the thatch of the town-head houses the wind brought on us the smell of burning heather and brake and fir-joist.

"Here's the lamentable end of town Inneraora!" said John, in a doleful key.

And we ran, the three of us, up the Fisherland burn side to the wood of Creag Dubh.

CHAPTER X.--THE FLIGHT TO THE FOREST.

We made good speed up the burn-side, through the fields, and into the finest forest that was (or is to this day, perhaps) in all the wide Highlands. I speak of Creag Dubh, great land of majestic trees, home of the red-deer, rich with glades carpeted with the juiciest gra.s.s, and endowed with a cave or two where we knew we were safe of a sanctuary if it came to the worst, and the Athole men ran at our heels. It welcomed us from the rumour of battle with a most salving peace. Under the high fir and oak we walked in a still and scented air, aisles lay about and deep recesses, the wind sang in the tops and in the vistas of the trees, so that it minded one of Catholic kirks frequented otherwhere. We sped up by the quarries and through Eas-a-chosain (that little glen so full of fondest memorials for all that have loved and wandered), and found our first resting-place in a cunning little hold on an eminence looking down on the road that ran from the town to Coillebhraid mines. Below us the hillside dipped three or four hundred feet in a sharp slant bushed over with young _darach_ wood; behind us hung a tremendous rock that few standing upon would think had a hollow heart Here was our refuge, and the dry and stoury alleys of the fir-wood we had traversed gave no clue of our track to them that might hunt us.

We made a fire whose smoke curled out at the back of the cave into a linn at the bottom of a fall the Cromalt burn has here, and had there been any to see the reek they would have thought it but the finer spray of the thawed water rising among the melting ice-lances. We made, too, couches of fir-branches--the springiest and most wholesome of beds in lieu of heather or gall, and laid down our weariness as a soldier would relinquish his knapsack, after John Splendid had bandaged my wounded shoulder.

In the cave of Eas-a-chosain we lay for more days than I kept count of, I immovable, fevered with my wound, Sir Donald my nurse, and John Splendid my provider. They kept keen scrutiny on the road below, where sometimes they could see the invaders pa.s.sing in bands in their search for scattered townships or crofts.

On the second night John ventured into the edge of the town to see how fared Inneraora and to seek provand. He found the place like a fiery cross,--burned to char at the ends, and only the mid of it--the solid Tolbooth and the gentle houses--left to hint its ancient pregnancy. A corps of Irish had it in charge while their comrades scoured the rest of the country, and in the dusk John had an easy task to find brandy in the cellars of Craig-nure (the invaders never thought of seeking a cellar for anything more warming than peats), a boll of meal in handfuls here and there among the meal-girnels of the commoner houses that lay open to the night, smelling of stale hearth-fires, and harried.

To get fresh meat was a matter even easier, though our guns we dare not be using, for there were blue hares to snare, and they who have not taken fingers to a roasted haunch of badger harried out of his hiding with a club have fine feeding yet to try. The good Gaelic soldier will eat, sweetly, crowdy made in his brogue--how much better off were we with the stout and well-fired oaten cakes that this Highland gentleman made on the flagstone in front of our cave-fire!

Never had a wounded warrior a more rapid healing than I. "_Ruigidh an ro-ghiullach air an ro-ghalar_"--good nursing will overcome the worst disease, as our antique proverb says, and I had the best of nursing and but a baggage-master's wound after all. By the second week I was hale and hearty. We were not uncomfortable in our forest sanctuary; we were well warmed by the perfumed roots of the candle-fir; John Splendid's foraging was richer than we had on many a campaign, and a pack of cartes lent some solace to the heaviest of our hours. To our imprisonment we brought even a touch of scholarship. Sir Donald was a student of Edinburgh College--a Master of Arts--learned in the moral philosophies, and he and I discoursed most gravely of many things that had small harmony with our situation in that savage foe-haunted countryside.

To these, our learned discourses, John Splendid would listen with an impatient tolerance, finding in the most shrewd saying of the old scholars we dealt with but a paraphrase of some Gaelic proverb or the roundabout expression of his own views on life and mankind.

"Tuts! tuts!" he would cry, "I think the dissensions of you two are but one more proof of the folly of book-learning. Your minds are not your own, but the patches of other people's bookish duds. A keen eye, a custom of puzzling everything to its cause, a trick of balancing the different motives of the human heart, get John M'Iver as close on the bone when it comes to the bit. Every one of the scholars you are talking of had but my own chance (maybe less, for who sees more than a Cavalier of fortune?) of witnessing the real true facts of life. Did they live to-day poor and hardy, biting short at an oaten bannock to make it go the farther, to-morrow gorging on fat venison and red rich wine? Did they parley with cunning lawyers, cajole the boor, act the valorous on a misgiving heart, guess at the thought of man or woman oftener than we do? Did ever you find two of them agree on the finer points of their science? Never the bit!"

We forgave him his heresies for the sake of their wit, that I but poorly chronicle, and he sang us wonderful Gaelic songs that had all of that same wisdom he bragged of--no worse, I'll allow, than the wisdom of print; not all love-songs, laments, or such naughty ballads as you will hear to-day, but the poetry of the more cunning bards. Our cavern, in its inner recesses, filled with the low rich chiming of his voice; his face, and hands, and whole body took part in the music. In those hours his character borrowed just that touch of sincerity it was in want of at ordinary times, for he was one of those who need trial and trouble to bring out their better parts.

We might have been happy, we might have been content, living thus in our cave the old hunter's life; walking out at early mornings in the adjacent parts of the wood for the wherewithal to breakfast; rounding in the day with longer journeys in the moonlight, when the shadows were crowded with the sounds of night bird and beast;--we might have been happy, I say, but for thinking of our country's tribulation. Where were our friends and neighbours? Who were yet among the living? How fared our kin abroad in Cowal or fled farther south to the Rock of Dunbarton?

These restless thoughts came oftener to me than to my companions, and many an hour I spent in woeful pondering in the alleys of the wood.

At last it seemed the Irish who held the town were in a sure way to discover our hiding if we remained any longer there. Their provender was running low, though they had driven hundreds of head of cattle before them down the Glens; the weather hardened to frost again, and they were pushing deeper into the wood to seek for b.e.s.t.i.a.l. It was full of animals we dare not shoot, but which they found easy to the bullet; red-deer with horns--even at three years old--stunted to k.n.o.bs by a constant life in the shade and sequestration of the trees they threaded their lives through, or dun-bellied fallow-deer unable to face the blasts of the exposed hills, light-coloured yeld hinds and hornless "heaviers" (or winterers) the size of oxen. A flock or two of wild goat, even, lingered on the upper slopes towards Ben Bhrec, and they were down now browsing in the ditches beside the Marriage Tree.

We could see little companies of the enemy come closer and closer on our retreat each day--attracted up the side of the hill from the road by birds and beast that found cover under the young oaks.